Horace

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.

Fidelity is the sister of justice.

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

My life is a struggle.

I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better been left to the men.

If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play.

Although the road is never ending, take a step and keep walking, do not look fearfully into the distance…on the path let the heart be your guide for the body is hesitant and full of fear.

You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.

You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude.

It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality… is the highest act of wisdom.

Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant acquaintance should sigh, a stranger should merely fumble sympathetically with his handkerchief.

She was taken by surprise at quite how breathtaking the twinkle in her eyes was. She listened and watched attentively, magnetized. As butterflies danced on her lips, her own stomach felt butterflies.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lift human life above the level of farce and give it some of the grace of tragedy.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.